


existence in such a form

by bleeckerst



Series: existence in such a form [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1930s, 1980s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Gen, Muggle London, POV Harry Potter, Scar Horcrux - Freeform, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, attempted animal abuse, time travel (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleeckerst/pseuds/bleeckerst
Summary: Tom laughed. “Are you barmy? The Silver Jubilee. The King’s been ruling for twenty five years.”Harry’s hand dropped. So did his stomach.“The King?” he repeated.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: existence in such a form [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070036
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	existence in such a form

Harry had fallen asleep on the eve of his eighth birthday against the shelf at the tall end of the cupboard under the stairs, glasses askew, a glossy, spiral-bound tome—Mary Berry’s _More Fast Cakes_ —pressed against his stomach. 

He had just jolted awake somewhere else entirely.

Things were at once dazed and jolted; like waking suddenly from a dream, or falling from a high place. Pitch blackness. Cool air, stale and still; it had a sort of nasty miasma of neglect. The cool plane beneath his stomach, palms, and forearms felt like floorboards—gritty with dust, rough under his hands like the floor of the school gym, time having pulled the hard planks apart. School? Was he at school?

Shakily, Harry groped around for his glasses, pushing himself up. 

A rock hard surface smacked his skull, and he fell back onto his elbows, hissing involuntarily at the pain. Somewhere cramped, then. Sprawled awkwardly, wiping his streaming eyes with his left sleeve, his right hand brushed over a familiar, cold strip of metal on the gritty floor—his glasses!

The glasses did little to illuminate his surroundings when he pressed them on, but as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he thought he could faintly see some darker silhouettes nearer to him; solid and featureless, arranged haphazardly. It appeared, to Harry’s untrained, nearsighted eyes, to be some sort of storage space. Squinting upwards through the gloom, the surface directly above him appeared to slope upwards further into the room—an attic?

The attic of Number Four, Privet Drive? Was that where he was? Only Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were allowed to go up to the attic. Harry was strictly forbidden. A couple of times, he had considered sneaking a look, anyway—what would the Dursleys’ have to hide?—but the trapdoor was too high for him to reach with the hooked stick in the upstairs airing cupboard, probably even now that he was eight. 

His stomach sank as he realised this was probably one of those inexplicable, punishable things that seemed to always happen to him, and as the darkness subsided further, he crawled forward on his hands and knees, careful not to lift his head too high. His left fingertips made contact with something—rough-carved, rounded wood—

There was sound. 

Harry snatched his hand back and flattened himself against the floor.

It seemed to be coming from below; a soft, muted scraping, like when Harry was vacuuming and moving furniture across carpet. 

Scraping was bad. If he’d somehow teleported to the attic in his sleep, then it would be very, very bad indeed if someone discovered him here.

The scraping paused, and Harry bit his lip as it became a methodical plodding, terse and ringing—careful limbs striking a metal surface. It had to be the ladder, but the steps were too light to be Uncle Vernon. Was it Aunt Petunia? What was she doing up here in the middle of the night?

The sounds paused—there was a half-second of ringing silence—and then came a light, swinging wantonly about the space. Harry pressed a palm to his thumping chest. The light skittered—he could see the shape of a wide, dark, V-shaped ceiling in the jittering light. So he _was_ in an attic! But it was odd; it didn’t look at all like it might belong on top of Number Four, Privet Drive. For one thing, it looked like an old, neglected sort of place, from the weathered rafters and the glimpses of light glinting across thick cobwebs. For another, it seemed too _large_ of a space to fit—

—Footsteps. 

Slowly and quietly, like a melting ice cube, Harry curled up as low and small as his limbs would allow, hoping the objects around him would be enough to hide him. He squeezed his eyes shut. There was an odd, soft, scrabbling. An angry hiss. 

“Don’t be difficult.”

That was not Aunt Petunia. 

Then, for a horrifying second, he thought the speaker— _a child? Dudley?_ —was addressing _him._

But then he heard the soft _thunk_ of a heavy object hitting wood. The room’s shading, through his closed eyes, became still. 

Harry hardly dared to breathe.

The scrabbling redoubled. Its sound had become sharper, louder—an animal? Something hard was scraping furiously across the same floor Harry lay against and echoing down the length of the boards. The sound crescendoed—

“— _No_ , you don’t!”—

—And then ceased all together. There was something like a growl of triumph, quiet, from the other side of the room. 

Harry grit his teeth and opened his eyes. 

Whoever it was, they couldn’t see him. Or hadn’t, yet. 

It would be good if there were some way he could see _them_. They seemed to be otherwise engaged; perhaps there was a chance he could sneak past them and go _out_ the same way he’d just heard them come _in_. Then he could figure out where he reallywas, and somehow get back to the cupboard under the stairs without punishment. 

He unfurled himself. The object he was curled behind appeared to be some kind of barrel, big and old-fashioned and going black at the bottom. There were several, of a similar shape and condition, in whatever corner of whatever room Harry currently inhabited. Luckily, they had all been pushed into more or less of a straight, orderly line. That left light to stream through a very thin gap at the bottom of the containers. If Harry flattened himself right down, maybe— _yes_. He could see the person, now, or at least part of them: a boy, probably, wearing grey shorts and long, thick socks and oddly misshapen, brown leather boots. 

The legs turned themselves, now facing away from Harry. His heart leapt. As long as whoever it was stayed where they were, and did not go inspecting the perimeter of the room, he was fairly certain he wouldn’t be seen. He could lie here, wait, stay still, keep as quiet as possible, hope against hope he wouldn’t be discovered, and then figure out a way to climb down from this roof-space when they were gone. 

_Just don’t move, Harry_ , he told himself. He had to squeeze his fingers into fists. _You’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, and you can’t be discovered, or you’ll get into trouble. Stay exactly where you are._

Harrygot onto his knees and peered overtop the barrel. His eyes widened.

There was a rabbit suspended in midair.

His jaw slackened, his legs abandoned the furtive crouch—it was _levitating_ —no, moving up, up, up towards the rafters, a slow but sure glide. The animal writhed; it was kicking and struggling in the air, its back twisting, its ears flopping this way and that. Around its neck was a thin, dark green length of material, it too ascending upwards as if it were gently leading the frantic little creature. 

And below was the boy, arms outstretched like a conductor before a symphony. Harry could not see his face, but his shoulders were rising and falling jerkily, and his head was thrown back above an old-fashioned grey coat. 

Frozen, Harry drunk the scene in for an indeterminable length of time. The—what the boy was doing—was that—?

Then, atop the long, outstretched arm, the thin wrist turned, the fingers twisting, coming into the palm. A second too late, Harry realised what was happening: the green ribbon winding around the rafter, the length pulling taught, the knot—one of those ones that slipped over itself—closing in.

“ _NO_!”

Harry leapt out from his hiding place, scrambling over the barrels and blindly in the direction of the boy. “ _STOP!_ ”

In the space of five seconds, three things happened: Harry landed awkwardly on the floor, hitting it with a thud and just managing to roll over onto his back to avoid breaking his glasses; the boy gave a start and kicked his lantern over with his left foot with a sudden, metallic _clang;_ and there was the keening sneer of material ripping as the rabbit, previously struggling for its life up in the rafters, shot down diagonally toward Harry like a cannon from a barrel, landing painfully on the centre of his stomach, winding him, leaping off, and skittering away into the shadows.

There was a beat of silence, a gravid standstill in which Harry lay on his back in bewilderment and pain, and the boy stood where he was, his face out of Harry’s line of sight.

Then—

“You.”

Having caught his breath, just, Harry shakily rolled over onto his knees.

“You did that. It was you,” said the boy, though it was not in the rough, strained growl of Uncle Vernon’s, nor the icy whip-crack of Aunt Petunia. He sounded… rather like Harry felt — winded, stunned.

Harry, adjusting his glasses, got to his feet, a palm clutching his stomach. He glanced up at the broken strip of material. Then at the boy, who was slightly hunched, his eyes flickering over Harry. Harry supposed they were of an age, with the boy being maybe slightly older, but he didn’t look like any boy Harry had ever seen around Little Whinging or its eponymous primary school: he was tall and bony, with thick, dark hair and eyebrows, pale skin, and a sharp face like one of the carved glass figures on Aunt Petunia’s mantelpiece. 

Presently, said face was frowning deeply at Harry, like the sight of him was confusing and perhaps a bit disturbing.

“I didn’t mean to do anything,” Harry blurted.

The soft lines in the boy’s face grew harsher. “You— it went right _at_ you…I _seen_ you! I mean, I saw you do it!” (Harry saw his shoulder rising and falling again, like the boy was working himself up) “—I saw you! I _saw you_!” 

“I didn’t—“

“Don’t. _Lie_.” 

The boy strode forward. He was Dudley’s height, maybe taller. Harry walked backwards automatically. Heart thumping, he glanced into the corner the boy and his light had emerged from. Was that a rectangle in the ground? … Unfortunately, it was closer to the boy than it was to Harry — but Harry was fast, perhaps—?

As if he had heard Harry’s debate, the boy changed track, moving swiftly to the right and blocking the exit. Harry backed away, but there was nowhere to go, and the boy’s face was set in a furious glower, his eyebrows almost touching in the middle. Half a second later the glare was right in front of Harry, and when he took another step back, his shin grazed against rough wood.

The boy stopped abruptly, crossing his arms. “‘Oo are you?” he barked.

Harry blinked.

“I’m—Harry?”

The boy—half a foot away, at most—was still. His mouth was a stern line, and he was breathing heavily, like Dudley staving off a tantrum. 

Harry realised he had raised his arms in front of his face, sheltering, and self-consciously lowered them. 

The movement seemed to trigger something in the stranger—his face became oddly blank, as if someone had been holding his muscles with strings and suddenly let go. 

He watched Harry for several seconds. Harry watched back. His heart thumped. 

Then the glare was back, as swiftly as it had vanished. “Are you _new_ , then?”

“I—“ (Harry got the sense that this was a moment where he really, really, needed to give the boy a simple, straight answer—like when Aunt Petunia had wanted to know why Harry’s hair had grown back over night— but his stomach flipped as he realised he had absolutely no idea what to say. New to what?) “—I… where am I?”

It was the wrong answer. The boy’s hand whipped out from his chest, long fingers snaking around Harry’s forearm, too-tight. 

“Answer me.”

“I don’t know where I am! I don’t know how I got here!” _Please_ , Harry almost said, but that had never worked before in this kind of situation, and he knew it wouldn’t work now.

The boy’s face blanked again. Like a dead person's. His eyes skittered: Harry’s sneakers; Harry’s jumper; Harry’s scar; Harry’s own eyes. Harry felt struck, _caught._ The boy’s irises were black pits, jumping out wildly from his grey-pale skin. They swam before Harry’s vision.

All of a sudden, the whole room juddered—and briefly, Harry saw the boy before him as if from a distance, his arms outstretched, and Harry _himself_ was positioned in the corner behind the barrels, like he had been just a few moments ago… and then he had left the room entirely and he was running, running through woods that he’d never _seen_ before, wind in his hair and in the trees above and in the bluebells below, a strange voice whispering in his ears… _does it mean to harm us? To maim? To kill?…_

The boy’s face reappeared in front of Harry with a jolt. His brows had contracted, pointing up towards his hairline like pinball flippers. They scrutinised each other. 

“None o’ the others ever did that,” said the boy at last, breaking the silence. 

He scrubbed his eye with the back of his hand and shuffled back slightly. Harry caught how he said “others” as “uvvas”.

“Y-you mean—?“ Harry swallowed. It had to be true. “Things happen to you, too.” It wasn’t a question, since he’d seen it with his own eyes. He glanced over the boy’s shoulder, up at the rafters—the rabbit, moving upwards by itself, the boy’s wrist twisting and the fabric length pulling taught. “Why were you doing that?” 

When he looked back at the boy, his face was perfectly blank again. 

“You’re too young to understand,” he said, a sneer to the tone. His voice had changed; like a formerly wild hedge someone had just clipped; like Aunt Petunia when guests came over. “It doesn’t belong here. It belongs in the countryside, in Colne Valley Park. I was… putting it out of its misery.” 

He said the last few words like they didn’t belong to him.

“You were— you were _killing it_.”

There was another strange interlude, in which Harry and the boy stared at each other in silence.

“No,” said the boy, at last. “Didn’t you hear me? It doesn’t belong here.” His fingers, still wrapped around Harry’s arm, tightened. “Nor do you. How did you get in?”

Harry’s heart skipped a beat. 

“I don’t know,” his voice sounded pathetically wobbly, “I… I just woke up. And I was here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Where are we?”

The boy rolled his eyes, but let go of Harry’s arm. “Wool’s Orphanage, number eleven Church Lane, Prince’s, Lambeth, London.”

“You mean you’re an orphan, too?”

“Yes. I have no parents.” The boy betrayed no emotion at this. He backed up a step, but not enough for Harry to dart past him, eyes flickering up and down again as if sizing him up. “…How are you an orphan?”

“My parents died?”

The boy rolled his eyes again, “But _‘ow?_ ”

“Car accident,” said Harry.

“When?”

“When I was a baby.”

The boy nodded. “My mother died when I was a baby, too.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I don’t know.”

Abruptly, the boy whipped around. He strode over to where the lantern had fallen and picked it up. Harry noticed a large patch in the centre of his coat. Then, when the boy turned around again, coming back towards Harry, he felt foolish for not having run when he’d had the chance. 

The two of them peered at each other again. Harry had never met another orphan before. All of the other children at school, to his knowledge, had parents. It had been just another thing to set Harry apart, to ensure the seats next to him stayed empty in the classroom and his bench in the schoolyard unoccupied, save for himself. 

But now there was another orphan in front of him, and it turned out that the boy was… well, something was wrong with him, too. Like Harry, he seemed to be wearing clothes that had been mended, perhaps were even hand-me-downs. Like Harry, he was— he could—

The boy beckoned, a quick, confident flick of his wrist that had Harry remembering the rabbit, and flinching slightly. Nonetheless, he stepped forward into the centre of the room. The boy swung the light at him. Then, he lowered himself to the floor, crossing his legs. He jerked his head at Harry. Harry got the sense that the boy wanted him to do the same; the boy wanted Harry to _sit with him_.

“What’s your name?” Harry asked, sitting cross legged opposite the boy. His heart was still thrumming rather fast. 

“Tom Riddle.”

“I’m Harry.”

“You already told me that.”

“Oh.”

Silence. The boy—Tom—kept trying to gaze right into Harry’s eyes with his own eyes. People didn’t usually want to gaze at Harry’s eyes—not at all—and Harry wasn’t sure he found it very comfortable, so he peered around the attic. London, Tom had said. They were in London. How on Earth had Harry gotten to _London_?

“How old are you?” Tom wanted to know.

“I turned eight today.”

Tom raised his chin. “I am eight-and-a-half,” he declared. “That means I know more than you, dun— doesn’t it.”

The end of his sentence didn’t rise up—he wasn’t asking a question. Harry was slightly insulted. On the other hand, if Tom knew more than he did, perhaps Tom could tell him how Harry had ended up so very far from Number Four, Privet Drive. 

He was just about to ask when Tom spoke again—brisk and loud, rudely puncturing the train of thought. “What things can _you_ do?” 

Harry’s eyes snapped back to Tom’s face, and he instantly regretted it—there were those bottomless dark eyes again, so wide Harry could see the whites all the way around, seemingly determined to bore right into Harry's. He hastily dropped his gaze to Tom’s coat. It was missing a button.

“Well, um…” he considered the question. What could he do? Harry could cook, and clean, but he had the feeling Tom wouldn’t consider those things particularly special, if he was an orphan, too. “I’m good at subtraction. And addition, obviously. And-“

“No, dummy. What _special things_?”

 _Spec-_ oh. Tom meant like the the rabbit. Or did he? Maybe he didn't think maths was very special. Harry was somewhat taken aback by the question, mostly because he hadn’t thought of the impossible things that sometimes happened to him as things that he had _done_. They had always just _happened_. When Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had locked him in his cupboard after this or that impossible thing happened, they always referred to it as something Harry had done, but Harry had always assumed they were lying like they always did, trying to make Harry into the wicked delinquent they were always saying he was.

“Well… I… I’ve made my hair grow—“(that had earned Harry a week in the cupboard)”—I turned my teacher’s wig blue, once—“(no supper for five days)”—Um… sometimes, when D— when, um, I’m at school, being— playing sports, I can sort’ve… teleport?”

“What’s that?” 

“I mean… disappear in one place and reappear in another?”

Tom’s face went from blank to animated very, very suddenly—his eyes widened and his jaw slackened, before both features narrowed out into a sharp grin. It was an odd sort of grin that reminded Harry strikingly and rather specifically of the illustrations of wolves in _the Three Pigs_ or _Little Red Riding Hood._ “So that’s how you got here, then?”

“I guess so,” said Harry, though the more he pondered, the more he decided it must have been true; he hadn’t been kidnapped, he hadn’t sleepwalked. He had _done something_.

But if he’d teleported here… was that how he going to get back to Number Four, Privet Drive? Harry didn’t want to go back to Number Four, Privet Drive—

“—I’m special, too,” Tom had apparently been waiting for Harry to ask him the same question, and grown bored of doing so, “I can do things just like you. And more. Loads more.”

“Like what?”

Tom’s face brightened — the wolf-grin softening, his dark eyes finally leaving Harry’s. “I can move things with my mind. I can tell if other people are lying. I can look at what people are thinking. I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me. I can make them hurt. I can make animals do what I want— and I can speak to snakes.”

“Oh,” it was a rather long list. Harry wondered if Tom could do more than him because he was eight-and-a-half, and Harry was only eight. 

“I think I… did a teleport, once,” Tom added. “I was climbing up the mott shop once, and I wanted to go look in the window but I couldn’t—and then I just thought about being there, and I was.”

“I didn’t think about being here,” said Harry. 

Or had he?

Tom tilted his head. “So you did it by accident, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes that happens to me, too.” 

“What’s a mott shop?” 

Tom sneered. “Place where you get a brass.”

“What’s a brass?”

“Y’know. A Jane.”

“What's a Jane?”

A slow smirk split Tom’s face. “You don’t know what a Jane is? A woman who’s on the bash. A nymph of the pave.”

Harry still didn’t understand, but he nodded quickly. He had always been slow at school, slow to understand what things meant. Stupid, really. Though Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon cared little for how Harry was going at school, Harry’s report cards always made them more displeased with him, when they were bad — and they were bad a lot.

“Where did you get those?” Tom demanded, leaning forward and jabbing a restless finger at Harry’s glasses.

Harry raised an automatic hand to protect them. “These? Um, the NHS?”

“Where’s that?” Tom looked wolfish again.

“Er, it’s not a shop, or anything like that. It’s—I think—well, my Aunt Petunia says they give the frames out free, and—“

“Charity. Like the church. We get things for free, too, sometimes. Fairy soap and wooden bricks and woollen blankets and all sorts. You must have gotten those because your parents died, too.”

Harry wondered if that were true. He actually thought Tom might be right—why else would they get them for free?

“We got more things this year because of the King’s Jubilee,” said Tom. Then, he added, “I always wanted a pair of spectacles.” 

The wolfish grin widened. Harry blinked, bringing a hand up to touch his glasses again. His stomach churned softly. His heart hadn’t slowed from the rapid cadence it’d taken up from the rabbit, and Tom messing with his thoughts. 

Tom—he realised all at once—was a mean sort of boy. 

He may have been like Harry—an orphan, in hand-me-downs, who could apparently do things other people couldn’t—but Harry thought he’d probably be friends with Dudley, if Tom lived in Little Whinging.

… Harry eyed Tom’s long legs, his sharp features, and stifled a shiver at the thrill of fear and adrenaline as he realised the boy would probably be very, very good at Harry Hunting.

Quickly, he wracked his brains for the first unrelated thing he could think of: “What do you mean, the King’s Jubilee?”

Tom laughed. “Are you barmy? The Silver Jubilee. The King’s been ruling for twenty five years.”

Harry’s hand dropped. So did his stomach.

“The King?” he repeated.

The other boy snorted. “Didn’t you go to _school_? Where are you from?”

“I do go to school,” Harry’s arms tightened around his knees. “And I’m from Surrey. Little Whinging,” as if for good measure — “number four, Privet Drive.”

“Are you from the orphanage, too?”

Harry shook his head. “I live with my aunt and uncle. I sleep in the cupboard under the stairs. What year is it?”

“It’s nineteen-thirty-five. Obviously.”

“Oh.”

Tom unravelled his arms and legs to sit up on his knees, peering down at Harry. One finger tapped on his knee. “Didn’t your aunt and uncle teach you nothing?”

“I’m from nineteen eighty-eight,” said Harry. “I don’t know why I’m in the olden days in London now. We have a queen. I’ve never _time-travelled_ before.”

“You’re from the future? They all sleep in cupboards in the future, then?”

“ _No_ ,” said Harry, face burning. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that. A part of him had just assumed…if Tom was like him, and Tom was an orphan, maybe Tom…?

But Tom’s grin had disappeared, his face forming into that blank mask again. 

“Prove you’re from the future.”

“How?”

Tom shuffled purposefully forwards on his knees, eyes widening meaningfully. He knelt in front of Harry, and Harry realised at the last second what Tom was about to do.

“ _No_!” Harry shuddered.

Tom rolled his eyes. “‘Ow am I meant to know if you’re from the future, then?”

“I thought you said you could tell if someone was lying to you.”

The other boy crossed his arms. “I told you. The others weren’t like you. They never put up a fight. I don’t think they even noticed nothing.”

“I’ll just tell you things,” Harry rushed out, leaning back as Tom advanced, averting his eyes from Tom’s, studying the dark outlines of the rafters above them. “I’ll tell you about life in the future, I’ll—“

But he didn’t know what things he was going to tell Tom, because Tom was grabbing his head and forcing Harry to look into his eyes, and then Harry was in the front garden planting pansies again, the ends of his fingernails black… he was chopping a courgette in the kitchen with the kitchen television on, Aunt Petunia taking a small bowl of melted butter from the microwave… he was sitting alone in the schoolyard, his knees and eyes stinging…

…he was kneeling in the middle of the woods with a snake coiled around his arm… he was being handed a slice of bread by a woman in an old-fashioned dress… he was walking down a long, narrow, cobblestone lane, a smooth pebble in hand… he was in a church pew, kicking the seat in front…

“Don’t do that,” said Tom, who was now in front of him again. His words were muffled, his hands still clutching Harry’s head, pinning Harry’s ears with his palms.

Harry wriggled free, “Don’t do it to me, then.”

“‘Ow else am I s’posed to know if you’re lying?”

Palms flat against the dusty floor, Harry stared at up Tom—not his eyes, anywhere but his eyes—and glared.

Tom scowled back. 

Then, as if on cue, the rabbit burst out from hiding and skittered across the floor.

Harry was fast. Tom was long. They dived at the same moment. There was a sharp _thud_ , an “ow!”, some moments of kicking and struggling, and a scrape of breath and sharp teeth against a forearm as Harry, arms wrapped around the thin, furry stomach, tried to free himself.

“Give it— ‘ere—“

“No!”

“Give it to me!”

“No, I won’t!”

“You won’t like what will ‘appen if you don’t.”

“You’ll kill it.”

“I told you—“

“NO!” Harry shouted. Then, somehow, he was free, and making for the hole in the ground, half-climbing, half-falling down a short ladder. The rabbit bucked, almost too strong for the crook of Harry’s left arm, and Tom was there above him, swearing and yelling. There was a flight of stairs with an exceptionally low ceiling — Harry barrelled down them and turned into a corridor. 

He ran for his life.

The corridor was long and dark, the floorboards slippery. Doors passed Harry on either side in flashes as he sprinted. Round another bend, there was a flight of stairs, down—

“Come back ‘ere! _Come back_!”

Harry took the stairs three at a time. Carpet-covered steps were violently pounded under two sets of frantic feet. Harry jumped the last few onto the next landing, grunting, and heard the thump of Tom doing the same, close behind. Too close. He flew around the bend of the stairs… down… down….the creature in his arms was twisting, writhing… he grunted, had to falter for a moment…

… then Tom was upon him, arms snaking around him and weight barreling into him, and they toppled down the remaining set of stairs and landed in a heavy heap at the bottom, and Tom hissed and swore as his arms took the brunt of the weight, and Harry’s head smacked into the floor, and then the world fell away again.

<><><><><>

Harry’s head pounded—it was like someone was punching his skull, over and over, but it didn’t really hurt. 

“Up, boy!”

The pounding shifted audibly—it seemed to come, now, from _outside_ Harry’s skull.

He opened his eyes. 

He had fallen asleep against the shelf at the tall end of the cupboard under the stairs, and the jagged shelves poking into the notches of his spine and the crown of his head. 

Stifling a groan, he rubbed the back of his aching skull, his twinging spine. His glasses were askew, scratching into the side of his face like restless, curious fingernails—but there was the zebra pattern of light through the grate, that was the smell of Acto on his bedcovers, sharp and sterile. 

Harry righted the world with two fingers. He straightened, yawning; his stomach hurt, too, and, glancing down, _More Fast Cakes_ was pressing viciously into his guts.

There was a _bang_ , and the cupboard door shook. 

Dudley-flavoured whoops and cackles bounced manically off the polished sheen of Aunt Petunia’s entrance hall, the pitter-patter of feet carrying them in the direction of the kitchen. Harry scowled at the door. Right. It was another day, then.

He took a few more moments to rub the parts of his body that ached, before stretching his arms back; a cardboard box on the bottom shelf held most of the clothes he owned, which were Dudley’s hand-me-downs and large and spilling out over the sides. Crouched in light-striped darkness, Harry pulled on some garments, ran a hand through his hair, and climbed out of the cupboard.

He went into the kitchen.

He stopped dead.

Tom Riddle was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the dining table, his knee inches from the toast rack. 

"You really do live in a cupboard, then."

Harry gawked, "What are you doing here?"

Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and Dudley swivelled their necks to look hatefully at him.

"Excuse me, boy?"

Tom smirked.

"Sorry, I-er, I had a dream you went on holiday," said Harry weakly.

Uncle Vernon's knife and fork clattered noisily against his plate.

"You know you're not supposed to do that sort of thing," Aunt Petunia snapped, "take your uncle's plate and stop being ludicrous."

 _What, dream?_ Harry thought viciously. But he took Uncle Vernon's plate, and, really, he knew what she meant—don’t do anything _strange_. He took the plate over to the sink and began filling it with hot water, the nearly-done washing up liquid blowing a raspberry as he upended it.

"Talking to himself like a raving nutter," came Uncle Vernon's grumble, "you did say that this—Saint, Saint—“

"Brutus', dear."

"Yes, that this Saint Brutus' was a boarding school, didn't you, Pet?"

"Yes, yes. Diddums, pass me the—no, Dudley, don't wipe your hands on the tablecloth—here, let mummy—“

"They can't see me, you know," said a voice behind Harry, and it was Tom.

Harry glared, but didn't dare say anything else. He wrenched at the tap until the water was punishingly hot. Why was Tom here? Why had Harry been with Tom?

"I figured that out for myself, thanks," he hissed from the corner of his mouth. 

For an awful, wild moment, he’d thought that he’d been about to find out Tom was really a friend of Dudleys, or else some kind of awful distant relation who’d come to stay.

“Well.” said Tom. “Where are we, then? I saw this place. In your mind.”

Harry scowled. He knew Tom was trying to get him into trouble again, by making it look as if he were talking to himself. 

The boy moved to the other side of the kitchen, and Harry, warily, stilled his hands on Uncle Vernon's greasy plate. He cast a surreptitious glance behind him. Tom seemed to be pawing at a stack of mail on the crockery dresser—he wasn’t picking them up, but if they moved obviously enough to be glimpsed by Aunt Petunia’s beady eyes…

“Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey,” said Tom in a sing-song voice—but there was an edge to it, brittle and low and dangerous. “So, you really are from Surrey! I thought you was lying.” Harry—now angrily trying to balance the plate in the empty drying rack—saw a dirty finger in his peripheral, felt something dig into his cheek. Barely. Like a ladybird come to rest. He blinked. “You don’t look like you’re from England at all.”

Harry rolled his eyes. 

“Why are you here?” he sub-whispered.

“Why am I here? Why am I here? You tell _me_!” 

“I don’t— _no_ —“

But Tom had planted one foot firmly on the kitchen floor, was raising the other back, and had kicked the kitchen cupboard with enough force to produce a hearty _thwump_ before Harry could lunge forward.

Harry cringed, gritted his teeth, waiting for Aunt Petunia’s neck to swivel—

Nothing happened. 

There had been no sound.

“Why can’t I _do_ things?” Tom spat, as the Dursleys continued with their breakfast and Harry stood rooted to the spot, mouth slightly open. “What did you do?”

Tom made a sudden grab for the plate on the dish dryer—Harry seized it at once. Tom’s fingers grasped, slid. 

“I can’t—why can’t I—?”

“Stop,” Harry hissed. He glanced over at the Dursleys. They hadn’t noticed anything. He righted the plate, though it had barely moved half an inch in their not-tussle.

He glanced at Tom, who was breathing heavily, nostrils flared. Tom was _right_ there, next to Harry at the sink and pressed up against his side. Yet there was no sensation, no feeling of clothes or skin, like there had been in Harry’s dream. Nothing.

Tom couldn’t hurt him here.

“Take me back to London,” Tom demanded, arms crossed over his stomach, mouth taught. An unfamiliar emotion flickered across his face, bringing the centre of his eyebrows up and together. It was like he’d forgotten about the blank mask entirely _. Panic_ , Harry realised.

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. He wheeled around. A stroke of inspiration hit in the form of a milk cartoon, sticking out the side of the rubbish bin’s flap. He strode over and toppled the lid off, grabbed the bag from the bin, and tied the ends.

Aunt Petunia watched him beadily as he slipped out the side door and out of the kitchen.

Tom followed him out of the door and round into the side alley—his boots barely crunched the gravel that was making a loud _shhh_ beneath Harry’s feet. “Give me my powers back.”

“I can’t,” said Harry, at a normal volume now they were out of earshot. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know why you’ve—you’ve somehow escaped from my dream—“

“ _Your_ dream?” Tom scoffed. “You came to _me_ , remember.”

“I dreamt of you.”

“No, you didn’t.” Tom’s voice grew sharper, higher. 

They emerged from the mouth of the alley onto Privet Drive. Tom hovered as they neared the bin. 

Harry hauled the lid up. “I woke _up_. We were having a fight on the stairs, and then I woke up!“

“No, we did a teleport!”

“It was a _dream_.”

“Wasn’t.”

“Was.”

“Wasn’t.”

“ _Was_.”

“WASN’T.”

The bin surged forward, lid opened like a gaping mouth, snapping—with a yell, Harry jumped backwards. Green sparks flew from the rubbish within; they shot out like fireworks onto the grass, singing the tops of the green blades. 

Tom had toppled backwards, too. He was breathing heavily. Harry stared—he seemed to _flicker_ around the edges, like he wasn’t quite all there anymore, like he wasn’t solid—

“You’ll pay for this,” Tom gasped.

And then he faded entirely, and there was an empty patch of grass where he had been. 

Harry stood there for a solid minute. 

He felt quite like he’d just ran a marathon. 

A morning breeze rustled the rubbish bag. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, played with the blades of grass where Tom had been, un-dented and pristine. Harry's head was hurting again. He slapped a hand to his forehead, feeling for the source. A rough sliver of skin prickled his fingertip. His scar.

Distantly, he heard something squeaky, rattling, approaching. 

“Hello, dear.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Mrs Figg was ambling past, her _chariots de course_ mewling on spindly wheels. 

He raised a hand in a shaky wave. 

_What had just…?_

Mrs Figg was saying something about the weather. She waved at Harry and continued down the street. 

He rubbed his eyes. 

When he opened them, the pantomime show of Privet Drive played on; normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Number six’s green chevrolet rolled onto the road, Mrs Strawbridge shooting him a reproachful glance through the driver’s window. A robin twittered on the fence between number four and number two. Across the road, number five’s automatic sprinklers came on automatically, with a soft hiss. There was no indication any of them had seen what had happened—had seen Tom.

Harry swallowed.

“Tom?” he whispered—just to be sure.

There was no response. Tom had simply vanished, into thin air.

The squeak of a door being pushed open roused him from his thoughts.

“ _Boy!_ ” It was Aunt Petunia. 

Right. 

Absently, Harry pushed the rubbish bag into the bin—inanimate once more—and wondered if she would be off to Sainsbury’s soon. It was a Sunday, which meant he would be expected to wash up in the downstairs toilet and make himself scarce as the whole house was filled up with the powerful musk of Sunday roast. 

After one last glance behind him, Harry trudged inside. No acknowledgment of his eighth birthday today, then. It seemed it was going to be just like any other day at Number Four, Private Drive—bar Dudley’s birthday or Christmas—completely and utterly normal.

Hefound himself rubbing absently at his scar as he slipped back into the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> -
> 
> Existence in such a form may be continued! In which case, Harry and Tom will figure out the exact nature of what’s going on, and what happened on the eve of Harry’s 8th birthday.


End file.
